Karl Selim Lemström (17 November 1838 in

Ingå Ingå (; , ) is a municipality in Finland, located in the southern coast of the country. Ingå is situated in the western part of the Uusimaa region. The population of Ingå is approximately , while the Raseborg sub-region, sub-region has a popul ...

– 2 October 1904 in

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

), was a Finnish

geophysicist Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and properties of Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists conduct investigations acros ...

.Lemström, Selim
Uppslagsverket Finland. Retrieved 2 October 2015. Lemström is best known on his research of

aurora borealis An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...

. He had several expeditions in

Finnish Lapland Lapland is the largest and northernmost Regions of Finland, region of Finland. The 21 municipalities in the region cooperate in a Regional Council. Lapland borders the Finnish region of North Ostrobothnia in the south. It also borders the Gul ...

and even tried to create an artificial northern lights in the laboratory.Brekke, Asgeir & Egeland, Alv: ″The Northern Light: From Mythology to Space Research″, p. 78–80. Springer, 2011.
Google Books
/ref> In 1870 Lemström studied the

metric system The metric system is a system of measurement that standardization, standardizes a set of base units and a nomenclature for describing relatively large and small quantities via decimal-based multiplicative unit prefixes. Though the rules gover ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

and introduced the system to Finland. Since 1872 he was a professor in the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

. Lemström has been described as the "forgotten pioneer of northern light studies," and some of his experiments have been compared with the ones made by

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla (;"Tesla"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 10 July 1856 – 7 ...

Aurora research

In 1868 Lemström participated the Swedish expedition to

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipel ...

on the Svalbard Islands, led by

Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (; 18 November 183212 August 1901) was a Finland-Swedish aristocrat, geologist, mineralogist and Arctic explorer. He was a member of the noble Nordenskiöld family of scientists and held the title of a friherre (ba ...

. On the way to the Arctic, Lemström studied aurora borealis in

Tromsø Tromsø is a List of towns and cities in Norway, city in Tromsø Municipality in Troms county, Norway. The city is the administrative centre of the municipality as well as the administrative centre of Troms county. The city is located on the is ...

and continued his observations in Svalbard. In Lapland Lemström took part at the first

International Polar Year The International Polar Years (IPY) are collaborative, international efforts with intensive research focus on the polar regions. Karl Weyprecht, an Austro-Hungarian naval officer, motivated the endeavor in 1875, but died before it first occurred ...

1882–1884 and found out that the phenomenon could not be caused by an electric current in the atmosphere. These

spectroscopic Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectrosc ...

analyses are considered as his greatest contribution to the aurora research. Some of Lemström's theories were later tested by the Norwegian scientist

Kristian Birkeland Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland (born 13 December 1867 – 15 June 1917) was a Norway, Norwegian space physics, space physicist, inventor, and professor of physics at the University of Oslo, Royal Fredriks University in Oslo. He is best remembe ...

.Egeland, Alv & Burke, William J.: ″Kristian Birkeland: The First Space Scientist″, p. 50–51. Springer, 2006.
Google Books
/ref>

References

1838 births 1903 deaths Scientists from the Grand Duchy of Finland People from Ingå People from Uusimaa Province (Grand Duchy of Finland) Swedish-speaking Finns Geophysicists Academic staff of the University of Helsinki {{Finland-scientist-stub